. 



ALEXA:; 





. 



lent*. At firt Mr. rook teemed to be adopting line of subjects 

 in which Wrlah peasant*, fbhonnen, and tlie like, were represented 

 engaged in out of-door avocations, or in gome occupation uggestive of 



pathetic or sentimental occurrence. Such were his ' Fisherman's 

 Wife looking out over a Stormy Set,' 'The Mountaineer,' the ' Webb 

 Stile.' ' Mountain Rivulet,' ' Market Girl,' and ' Emigrant's Departure.' 

 The last wa* an approach to the larger and more ambitious style of 

 his later works. In these Mr. Poole select* a theme demanding for 

 iU acoMsrnl treatment considerable imagination, invention, poetic 

 feeling, and technical skill, and in none of these respects boa he 

 proved wanting. His great works those on which be would pro- 

 bably be most desirous of staking his reputation are his 'Solomon 

 Kagle exhorting the People to Repentance during the Plague of 

 London' (1848), 'The Beleaguered City* (1844), 'Suppression of Syou 

 Monastery' (1846), 'The Ooths in Italy' (1851), 'The Messenger 

 announcing to Job the Slaughter of his Servants,' &c. (1850), and ' The 

 Kong of the Troubadour Bertram! de Born' (1854). In these works 

 Mr. Poole has justified bin claim to a foremost place among English 

 painters. As will have been seen, while the subjects arc such us to 

 admit of very forcible treatment, they are, in many instances, of a 

 painful rather than alluring character ; and he has not sought by gay 

 or florid colouring to softeu or conceal the sterner features, but rather 

 by strongly-contrasted forms and actions, broad masses of shadow, 

 and decided though sombre colour, to bring out most strikingly the 

 circumstances of horror, of suffering, or of violence inherent in the 

 theme. Yet Mr. Poolo often shows that he is not only as fully alive 

 to the beautiful in nature and art as the painters who are most 

 frequently engaged in depicting it, but that he is 03 capable of 

 rendering it upon canvass. It is hardly to be denied that in many of 

 Mr. Poole's pictures there is a something wanting to fit them to rank 

 among the highest examples of historic art, but at the same time it is 

 certain that his works are never common -place, nor made up of remi- 

 niscences or adaptations from the works of ' the great masters,' but arc 

 for the most part original in conception as well as treatment, and that 

 whilst they take a very high rank on account of their technical merits, 

 their first claim to admiration arises from the higher and rarer merit 

 of mental excellence. 



Mr. Poole has also contributed the following works to the Royal 

 Academy exhibitions, some of them being scarcely inferior in import- 

 ance or excellence to those above named: 'Herman and Dorothea,' 

 1840; 'By the Waters of Babylon we sat down and wept," 1S41 ; 

 Margaret alone at the Spinniug-WhecI,' and 'Tired Pilgrims,' 1842; 



Arl6to discovered by Duke Robert le Diable,' 1848; 'Three Scenes 

 from the Tempest,' and ' The Blackberry Gatherers,' 1849 ; ' The May 

 Queen,' and 'Mariana singing to her Father 1'ericlcs,' 1852; 'The 

 Seventh Day of the Decameron ; ' ' The Conspirators the Midnight 

 Meeting,' 1856. In 1847 Mr. Poole obtained one of the premiums of 

 3002. awarded by the Royal Commissioners of Fine Arts for his 

 painting of ' Kd ward's Generosity to the People of ColaU,' exhibited 

 that year in \Ve*tminst. r Hall. He was elected A R.A. in 1S10. 



POPE, ALEXANDER, was born in London, May 22, 1688. His 

 parent* were Roman Catholics, and hU father, who according to Pope's 

 own account was of a noble family, kept a lincndraper's shop in the 

 Strand. In hi* early years bis father retired to Binfiel.l in Windsor 

 Forest, and hero Pope formed his first plans of study, and while yet a 

 child determined to be a poet. The ' Pastorals ' were composed when 

 be was sixteen, but not published till he was twenty-one (1709), in 

 Tonson's ' Miscellany.' He next produced the ' Essay on Criticism,' 

 and not long after appeared the ' Rape of the Lock,' and tho ' Temple 

 of Fame,' a partial imitation of Chaucer. In 1713 he published 

 ' Windsor Forest,' and soon aft; r this date the proposals for a sub- 

 scription to a version of the ' Iliad.' The whole work was completed 

 between bis twenty-fifth and thirtieth year. In the translation of the 

 ' Odyssey,' Pope was helped by Brooiue and Fenton. Pope translated 

 twelve books, Broome eight, and Fenton four. 



In 1728 be published the ' Dunciad,' and in 1733 tho 'Essay on 

 Man,' which however was not avowed till the next year, wh< n lie wrote 

 bis ' Character* of Men, or Moral Essays.' Tbeso were preceded and 

 followed by ' Imitations of Horace,' and in 1742 tho list of bis poem* 

 concludes with an additional book of the ' Dunciad,' in whiclt Cibber 

 take* the place of Theobald, the original hero. About this time his 

 health declined, and on tho 30th of May 1744 he died of asthma and 

 decay of nature. 



To enumerate the friends of Pope would be to give a list of tho 

 great men of the time. One of his failings was to desire the acquaint- 

 ance of men of fashion, and his literary supremacy gave him thai of 

 men of learning, so that he commanded a very largo circle. Among 

 them were Adduon, with whom he quarrelled ; Swift, to wl 

 addressed the 'Dunciad ;' Attrrbury, on whose trial be appeared as 

 a witness for tho defence ; Boliugbroko, to whom ho U said to hare 

 owed the maxims of the ' Essay on Man ; ' and Voltaire. 



Pope was short and deformed. It is surprising that ho should have 

 lived so long as he did, having both physical infirmity and hard study 

 to contend against, with the addition of an irritable temper, over which 

 he had so little control that be could not avoid showing anger by tho 

 very contortions of his countenance. Perhaps there is nothing in the 

 history of literature more, remarkable than the popularity acquired by 

 Pop*. To attain, in the estimation of a great nation, to the first rank 



among her poets, themselves the greatest which any nation has to 

 bout, U-no mean di-tiuHiun ; but that it should have been acquired 

 oil the strength of such poem* a* Pope has left, is not less wonderful. 

 An enumeration of bis principal works will show that, with one or 

 two trivial exceptions, his very subject* were borrowed from son* 

 other writer. His ' Pastorals' arc a mixture of Virgil and Theocritus, 

 and have little to recommend them except what U common to all the 

 verses of his school a beautiful flow of words, and an epigrammatic 

 turn of expression. This by convention has received the name of 

 poetry; but if by poetry we mean anything more than ingenious 

 thoughts put into ornamental language, if poetry is indeed to be what 

 the Greeks understood by it, a creation, we shall find little of it here. 

 Kven the ' Messiah,' beautiful ta it undoubtedly is, has thus estimated 

 little claim to tho title of a poem. Indeed, it professes nothing more 

 than to be an imitation. 



The ' Essay on Criticism ' is worth notice, as, combined with Pope's 

 preface to his works, it shows very clearly what influence was most 

 predominant in forming the prevailing style of versification in his time. 

 That a man possessed of any measure of poetic spirit should bo so 

 tremblingly alive to what others said of him, n in his second work to 

 employ himself in canvassing the merits of critics and the rule* of 

 criticism, is certainly not what we might expect. He who has given 

 biith to a high production of the imagination, must feel that it 

 rests upon other grounds than the decisions of any man or party of 

 men. At the time when Pope wrote however authorship was reduced 

 to a kind of system. The end in view was to please the readers ; tho 

 readers themselves were almost entirely of one and that a limited 

 class ; tho class who read were members of the fashionable world, and 

 frequented coffee-houses, the clubs of those days. At these coffee- 

 houses some one presided ; and hence, by getting the ear of this pre- 

 sident, or, what wus better, by taking his place, an author became in 

 great measure the judge of his own work. Dryden's literary supremacy 

 could never recur among us, for it requires a confined clasx, and a 

 very peculiar state of society, to secure so general a reputation. 

 However Dryden obtained it, and, by doing so, set the fashion. The 

 booksellers favoured it, for nothing could be so convenient t 

 as to have under their influence the rulers of literature ; and 1 1 > 

 of all this was to make Pope an imitator of Dryden, and all tho other 

 poets of the day imitators of Pope, as the person whose style was the 

 moat approved by those whom Addison and Pope and their contem- 

 poraries call " the town," the only literary tribunal then in being. 



The preface which Pope prefixed to his works is quite as remarkable 

 as the ' Essay on Criticism, in assuming, as it does from beginning to 

 end, that the proper object of a writer is to please. It u cuiimu 

 also, as a memorial of that fashion which pocta then follow, ; in 

 dedicating their work to eome great man, and in rehearsing patron's 

 names and titles; all which follies Pope ridicules though at the same 

 time he is governed by the spirit which dictated them, and boasts that 

 he had been " encouraged by tho great, commended by tho eminent, 

 and favoured by the public in general." 



Translations and imitations are an important part of Pope's works. 

 Of these the most remarkable are the versions of tho 'Hi, .1 

 'Odyseey,' perhaps the most generally road of all bin writings. It is 

 of course pretty well known at present that Pope's claims to the name 

 of a translator are very small. He bag contrived to throw an air of 

 Virgilian elegance and courtliness over the simple verses which formed 

 his subject, but it would be hard to show a more thorough dUguise 

 than that which the ' Iliad ' puts on in Pope's English, and 

 spite of his very frequent use of Chapman's version. All M 

 will admit that Pope has Latinised tho ' Iliad,' a very prevalent fault 

 in his day, when Latin held a place so much more important than 

 Greek in the estimation of literary men. For his imitations of some 

 parts of Chaucer this apology may be mode, that they were written 

 very early. A comparison of their style with that of .Mr. Words- 

 worth's ' Prioress's Tale,' shows what might have been done, but between 

 Pope and Chaucer there is about the same difference as bet 

 conservatory and a bonk of wild flowers in a forest. 



In Pope's days it was tho fashion to be a philosopher, whence it 

 was necessary for Pope to compose a philosophic poem. It might 

 perhaps have been well to wei^h a little the consequence* which 

 theories like those of ' The Essay on Man ' would have in practice, 

 before making them the foundation of a system ; but this was no 

 part of 1'ope's scheme, and out of his materials, supplied, as is thought, 

 by Bolingbroke (see the poem itself, iv. 383), ho has written a poom, 

 many Hues of which are immortal, while the sentiments are frequently 

 vous, and the facts not seldom fictions. 



In his imitations of Horace, Popo has been most happy : indeed, 

 where tho parties have so much in common, it was to be expected 

 that the imitator would be successful. Dazzling point and harmonious 

 verse are combined in these delightful en: ., hlch arc worthy 



of all praise. Indeed these are the characteristics which hav 

 Pope his popularity. But they do not constitute, poetry of a high 

 i.rder. To Pope they were doubtless temptations too strong to bo 

 resisted. Ho who could write so well in the fanhiou was not likely to 

 sacrifice fame by writing better against the fashion. 



One important poem remains unnoticed, ' The Duncud,' in which 

 we may trace Pope's chief excellences, and the subject King one to 

 which his manner is peculiarly adapted, the poem on tho whole a , 



